> Actually they have it right at the beginning. Hens don't know if an egg is fertilized or not. I hate to nitpick you here, but the person you're replying to i

> Actually they have it right at the beginning. Hens don't know if an egg is fertilized or not. I hate to nitpick you here, but the person you're replying to is correct, and it's really not at the beginning of the article. Like you reiterate, the article states that the hen doesn't know — which is sensible (how would the hen know?), but doesn't answer our question: "What does a hen do with her unfertilized eggs?" The article does answer the question for the case of a non-brooding hen: the hen doesn't brood, so not much of anything. But I think a lot of us were more interested in the case of a brooding hen, and the article then tells us about the process for a fertilized egg, which, while interesting, doesn't answer the question. (I would guess that most of us that were raised in more urban areas believe that most or all hens brood. I did not know that some did and some didn't, for example.) You, and other commenters in the thread, have thankfully given us closure w.r.t. the question by posting, though.